Food for body and mind – lamb pot au feu

Posted by petra08 on September 30, 2012 · 5 Comments 

I have a friend who comes to visit me once a year. She leaves family and all the every day obligations behind and we spend our time catching up on life in general and as she is also a foodie, talk about and make food. We are both cooks but come from different angles. I don’t cook so much during the week and make time on the weekend, whilst my friend, who cooks for her family almost every day, prefers food that takes about 30 minutes. It is always interesting when we are due to decide what to cook.

One thing that we always share is our love for spicy aubergine and lemon Chicken at Cammasan in Kingston, one of the best Chinese I have ever been to. This time we had some baby bok choy with garlic sauce on the side, a delicious lunch.

I believe that when everything is hectic it is even more important to make time for food, to eat food cooked from scratch so you know what you are eating. I think this is good for body and mind to stop and eat something home cooked, bursting with flavour and makes you take a break and just enjoy the moment. So Saturday morning I headed to the butcher and got some of their smoked back bacon and then I cooked the rashes really crisp. To go with that I did scramble eggs with Moliterno cheese infused with black truffle  and cottage cheese. I also bought Portobello mushroom that I filled with yellow cherry tomatoes growing outside my window.

We then went shopping and I found some very beautiful heritage tomatoes that I felt I just had to buy.

I made tomato and mozzarella salad as a snack when we came home. All the tomatoes had different flavour and structure and it was a delicious mix. I used a hint of agave nectar, good quality olive oil, sea salt flakes, pepper, lemon juice and sliced spring onions to go with the tomatoes and mozzarella.

We wanted to go to the pub so I got ingredients for a lamb pot au feu, a dish that is filling but light and warming inside out.

I took out the veg for prepping.

Lamb Pot au Feu

• 6 slices neck of lamb
• 1 Tolouse sausage, whole 
• 1 chorizo sausage, whole 
• 2 potatoes, peeled and halved
• 3 carrots, whole peeled
• 3 small fennel bulbs, halved 
• 4 celery sticks, whole 
• 1 leek chopped in chunks
• 3 shallot onions
• A handful of runner beans, roughly chopped
• Chopped parsley, I used the stems in the stock
• Cracked pepper
• Salt
• 1 sprig of rosemary
• 4 bay leaves

Bring the lamb to the boil, discard the water and rinse the lamb. Place in a clean pot, add cold fresh water and place on the cooker again. Add all the ingredients with the parsley stems on the top so they are easy to remove. Bring to the boil and take down to simmer. Skim the top of any impurities and let simmer for about 3 hours. Once cooked add the fresh parsley and serve with chunks of veg and meat with plenty of broth. We ate it with toast and ripe gorgonzola dolce. We felt that it was best served with cold beers.

After about 3 bowls each we couldn’t eat anything more but went to bed very happy, all slept well and felt ready to take on the world in the morning, even if we had to get up early, food for body and mind!

 

I have entered this to Javelins excellent, cooked from scratch, Made with Love Mondays

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Filed under Allotment/Veg, Bread, Carrot, Celery, Cheese, Fennel, Gorgonzola, Herbs, Lamb, Leek, Meat, Onion, Recipe, Starch · Tagged with Cammasan Kingson, Lamb pot au Feu, Lemon chicken, neck of lamb, spicy aubergine, tomato and mozzarella salad